Heyman Center for the Humanities released its events listing for Fall 2011. Nearly always the source of academic wet dreams, this semester’s series features Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, as well as Columbia history extraordinaire Mark Mazower. Admission is free, open to the public, and first-come, first-served (unless noted). More information on the center’s website.”>

Last night, our beloved Heyman Center for the Humanities released its events listing for Fall 2011. Nearly always the source of academic wet dreams, this semester’s series features Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, as well as Columbia history extraordinaire Mark Mazower. Admission is free, open to the public, and first-come, first-served (unless noted). More information on the center’s website.

Here’s the lineup:

NIKOS ALIVIZATOS, MARK MAZOWER, & MICHALIS PSALIDOPOULOS
“The Greek Crisis: A Conversation”
Monday, 19 September, 7:30pm, 501 Schermerhorn Hall
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought

“THEORY-ART-ACTION: ON BINATIONALISM AND OTHER SPECTERS”
Three events presented by the School of the Arts and the Heyman Center for the Humanities

• UDI ALONI (director)
  Screening of *Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments* (2002), Followed by Q&A with the director
  Friday, 7 October, 6:30pm
  511 Dodge Hall
• UDI ALONI, ALAIN BADIOU, & SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK; Moderator: JAMES SCHAMUS
  Panel discussion on Aloni’s *What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and Other Specters* (CU Press, 2011)
  Wednesday, 12 October, 7:00pm
  Miller Theatre
• UDI ALONI (director)
  A performance of *While Waiting* presented by The Freedom Theatre, Jenin
  Monday, 17 October, 7:00pm
  Shapiro Theater, 605 West 115th Street
  RSVP required: arts@columbia.edu

SIDDHARTHA DEB
The Writing Lives Series: “The Beautiful and the Damned: Writing about the New India”
Interlocutor: GAURI VISWANATHAN; Chair: ADAM SHATZ
Thursday, 3 November, 6:15pm, Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center

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Bwog likes to hop, and we encourage you to do the same. Amid the craziness of the EC courtyard lies the glorious Heyman Center for the Humanities. Last night they released the full Spring 2011 lecture schedule, featuring intellectual heavy-hitters like David Harvey and James Fenton. You should go! You get to snuggle up to smarter superiors and sometimes they have good snacks.

Complete Schedule of Events
Spring 2011

THOMAS CROW & TIM GRIFFIN
“Whither Contemporary Art?”
Wednesday, 26 January, 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center

CHRISTOPHER RICKS
“Just Like a Man? Dylan and the Charge of Misogyny”
Tuesday, 8 February, 7:00pm
Sulzberger Parlor (3rd Floor, Barnard Hall)
Co-sponsored by the Barnard Forum on Poetry and Poetics

JOSEPH KOERNER
“Enemy Painting: Carl Schmitt and Hieronymus Bosch”
Thursday, 17 February, 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center

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Seo Hee Im reports from 1501 SIPA, where Terry Eagleton spoke last night, at an event co-sponsored by the Institute of Religion, Culture and Public Life, and the Heyman Center for the Humanities.

Terry Eagleton, world-famous literary theorist, was introduced as “so sparkling, so Irish.” This seemed apt, as Eagleton, deftly wielding self-congratulatory British charm and searing academic banter, began his lecture by thanking Columbia for rescuing him from Notre Dame, where he currently teaches, for a few days of “precious” secularism. He went on to discuss why atheism was suddenly brought back to centerstage in debates over fundamentalism following 9/11. “Atheists are obsessed with religion as puritans are with sex,” he proclaimed.

Eagleton made great use of his knack for aphoristic wit, (“Jesus would not have been invited to write for The Wall Street Journal“), to both charm his audience and to shower wrath on “Ditchkins,” his nickname for the composite of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The problem with new atheists like Ditchkins, Eagleton argued, is that instead of engaging in proper debate, they create feeble strawmen that they can easily demolish. Expecting religion to offer an explanation for the universe is ridiculous, he said, adding that such thinking is analogous to considering Hamlet an explanation for mental illness, or Moby Dick a report on the whaling industry. Similarly pithy comparisons peppered the talk, such as relating Lady Gaga and Brad Pitt to Karl Marx.

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The Heyman Center for the Humanities, a.k.a. the academic building oddly juxtaposed with the hedonistic wasteland of East Campus, hosts a great series of lectures throughout the year on subjects from a broad array of humanities fields. So whether you’re into Reconstruction or reification, you just might find something that suits your fancy. The Center’s schedule of events for the rest of the semester follows below. All events are open to the public and no registration is necessary.

image via the Heyman Center

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The Heyman Center continued its exceptional series of lectures on Thursday night with a presentation by Professor Steven Shapin of Harvard. Bwog’s Academic Exceptionalism Correspondent Dane Cook was there.

Steven Shapin indulged an overflowing audience of (presumably) Ivory Tower affiliates at the Heyman Center last night with a presentation of his most recent work entitled, “The Ivory Tower: A History of an Idea about Knowledge and Politics.” A professor of history and sociology of science at Harvard—Shapin is an unabashed resident of the proverbial Ivory Tower himself, and he has traced its origins and evolution through his research.

Shapin began by expelling all speculation that a material Ivory Tower ever existed. “There never was an Ivory Tower,” he said. Appropriate to our contemporary connotation of the phrase, the “Ivory Tower” abides entirely in the abstract. It is a symbol, an idea—merely a figure of speech. Read more…

An expanded schedule of events for EC’s intellectual haven was sent out last night, causing oohs ahhs and drooling. Bwog’s pulse notably quickened when we reached the new addition of PrezBo and Salman Rushdie.

Here’s the e-mail containing the line up thus far:

THE HEYMAN CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES
Revised and Expanded Schedule of Events, Spring 2010

Admission to all Heyman Center events is open to the public.
Unless noted below, events are free and no registration is necessary.
Seating is on a first come, first served basis.
For more information, please visit www.heymancenter.org.

ANTHONY GRAFTON
“Race in the Renaissance”
Thursday, 4 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

PETER GALISON
“Blacked-Out Spaces: Freud and War Censorship”
Thursday, 11 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

Salman Rushdie, Jamaica Kincaid, and so much more after the jump!
Read more…

The Heyman Center has released their Spring 2010 events schedule, and it’s highlighted by not one, but two appearances by Mr. Right Side of History himself, Joseph Stiglitz. He’ll be part of “The Continuing Financial Crisis: Perspectives from the North and the South” on March 25th with Prabhat Patnaik, and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, and “Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up,” along with Nancy Folbre and Geoffrey Heal on April 19th.

Others that stand out:

• “The Great American University: Is Its Preeminence at Risk?” Our guess is “maybe,” but Geoffrey Stone (current editor of the Inalienable Rights series), Richard Axel (2004 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), and former CU provost Jonathan Cole discuss. February 17th.
• Eric Sundquist delivers this year’s Lionel Trilling Seminar, “Obama, King, Ralph Ellison, and the American Dream.” Kenneth Warren and Glenn Loury are the respondents. April 15.
• Jamaica Kincaid (Important Author) gives a reading followed by an interview. April 22nd.
• M.H. Abrams, who conceived and edited the freaking Norton Anthology of English Literature, will lecture on “The Fourth Dimension of Poetry.” April 28th.

Full email after the jump. Read more…

If you were all hyped up for the “conflict” part of last night’s Veritas Forum “Faiths in Conflict: Searching for a Common Space,” you may be disappointed by the friendly banter between secularist Heyman Center Director Akeel Bilgrami and Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra. Bwog correspondent Sarah Ngu reports on their discussion of how to build foundations for tolerant, mixed-faith communities.

Akeel Bilgrami wanted to avoid a “polemical evening,” so the first thing he did was distance himself from staunch atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He called the pair “some of the most distasteful people on the intellectual scene today” and compared them to religious fundamentalists. You’ll only get the intellectual play if you know that both men claim that labels like “Muslim,” and “Christian” can only be used to describe extremists. If you go to church and say your prayers at night, you’re either a heathen or an atheist in denial

Ramachandra expressed brief sympathy for “militant atheists” like Hitchens and Dawkins, noting that, if only exposed to televangalism early in life, he would not be a Christian today. He then lamented with Bilgrami the dearth of serious books on religion in bookstores and picked a bit of a fight with what he calls “American tolerance.” Since Americans who disagree with each other are so content with their own beliefs, they don’t engage with each other on religious questions and don’t leave their own beliefs open to revision.

True tolerance is what Ramachandra calls a “political secularism”: Cultural groups must, without surrendering their core values, challenge their members to be self-critical and practice an empathetic appreciation for others. A group managing this may contribute to public wellbeing, religious diversity, and global peace. According to Ramachandra, faith can provide the proper grounds for a “politically secular” space even for the marginalized. To him, the core message of Christianity is that God identifies with the marginalized. Thus Christians ought to care for “the dregs of the world,” as he says they have done in the past, leading the abolition and labor movements.

Professor Eisenbach, moderating, asked a blunt question of the speakers – “Where do human rights come from?”

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A favorite start-of-semester tradition in Bwog-land is the release of the Heyman Center’s schedule for the upcoming semester. Some staffers get to pencil in talks and discussions they’ll later miss (thanks homework!), and some get to giggle yet again at “Heyman Center.” Because some of us are four years old, really. This year’s best bets for you to adopt The Thinker‘s pose:

• Harvard’s University Library Director Robert Darnton lecturing on “Google, Libraries, and the Digital Future” (September 17th)
• Not one, but two readings by former Poets Laureate, Rita Dove (September 23rd) and Richard Hass (November 16th)
  
• A double act as well from famous philosopher Charles Taylor, discussing “Culture, Identity, and Politics” (September 28th) and lecturing on “Can Human Action Be Explained?” (November 10th)
  
• A day-long conference on academic freedom, including David Bromwich, Richard Shweder, Robert Zimmer, and Judith Butler (October 21st)
  
• Intellectual historian Quentin Skinner asks “Is the State a Fictional Person?” (October 22nd).
• Several Columbia history luminaries–Alan Brinkley, Victoria de Grazia, Eric Foner, and Pamela Smith–join Caroline Bynum to talk about “What is Happening in History Now?” (November 19th).
• Stanley Fish, Catherine Stimpson, and Akeel Bilgrami join three Columbia professors–Vince Blasi, Katherine Franke and Bruce Robbins–to discuss “Freedom, Law and Academic Inquiry” (November 20th).
  
• Noam Chomsky delivers the Edward Said Memorial Lecture (December 8th).
• Three Nobel Laureates in Economics–Amartya Sen, Kenneth Arrow, and Eric Maskin–debate “Social Choice and Individual Values,” with a fourth Nobel Laureate, Columbia’s own Joseph Stiglitz, chairing. 

Full schedule after the jump. Read more…

LectureHopper Mark Hay sat in on Thursday’s presentation by noted sociologist Bruno Latour at the Heyman Center for the Humanities. He sends Bwog this dispatch from the event, a lively discussion of identity, ideology, and globalization.

For those who have never hunkered down for an event in the Kraft Center’s Rennert Hall, a few words may be in order on the venue chosen for the Heyman Center lecture. Relatively new and just off the main campus, Rennert is pristine, sterile, brisk, and matter-of-fact. The hall is too big to be cozy but below the threshold of massive; it carries a spirit of inclusion, but it ultimately limits itself to rabid specialization.

Such was the venue and such was the lecture: Bruno Latour, the acclaimed French sociologist, anthropologist, and theorist, attracted a mass of bushy-bearded, bespectacled, and blustery-haired social scientists of all ages.

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Bwog Lecture Hopper David Berke attended tonight’s Heyman lecture, starring Orhan Pamuk with Andreas Huyssen. Special Brinkley cameo towards the beginning!

Deep in the catacombs of the Kraft Center, Nobel Prize Laureate/MEALAC professor Orhan Pamuk spoke to a basement of eager listeners, the packed room filled beyond capacity.  The literary luminary, who moonlights as a controversial political figure in his native Turkey, discussed art, persecution, language and a curiously conceived museum.  Andreas Huyssen, chair of Germanic languages, mediated the evening, and outgoing Provost/Bwog’s undying AP US history love Alan Brinkley kicked things off with a brief introduction.

Pamuk trained as a painter for years, then switched to studying architecture before making the jump to novelist.  Not surprisingly, Pamuk cited “visuality” as a seminal element of his work.  Pamuk and Huyssen are currently teaching a seminar about the relation between literature and pictures (the aptly titled Words and Pictures), and his most recently released English translation—an essay collection titled Other Colors—also includes photographs.  Explaining his interest in long form fiction, Pamuk asserted that the novel “kills all other literary forms,” a statement both audacious and fun to act out on my bookshelf, Jonathan Swift-style. To Pamuk, this “killing” has had international implications, for, in his mind, globalization did not begin in the late 20th century, but started with the worldwide spread of novelistic writing a century ago.

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While basically just waiting for classes to begin, we found ourselves looking over The Heyman Center’s new fall schedule. As usual, it’s mostly academic events with a few more timely topics mixed in. Some highlights:

• “What Was Democracy” (Sept. 22nd): Joyce Appleby of UCLA discusses early American democracy with Columbia’s own Eric Foner. 
• “Lionel Trilling and His Legacy” (Oct. 3rd): the influence of the famous literary critic/author/Columbia professor is the subject of a day-long conference, including the New Yorker‘s Louis Menand. Free copy of Partisan Review not included.
  
• “An Election Post-Mortem” (Nov 5th): Katha Pollitt of The Nation and Bwog favorite Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker review the election the day after.
  
  
• “%@#?!: From a Ten-Cent Plague to a Ninth Art in 90 Minutes” (Dec. 1st): Journalism professor David Hadju is joined by artist Art Spiegelmann, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus.
  

Noam Chomsky stormed campus yesterday with a lecture double-header. Bwog commences its in-depth coverage with the linguist’s more academic engagement. Below, Linguistics major Sara Maria Hasbun reports on deep thoughts.

Noam Chomsky isn’t exactly known for his engaging lectures, but even so, he packed the theatre of the Casa Italiana by 2:45 for a 4:00 booking yesterday. His lecture was titled, “The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden?”; the most entertaining line was the first sentence: “For those of you anxious to hear the punchline, if you have something else to get to, the answer is, ‘Everything.’”

The event, sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities, was hyped as a linguistics lecture, though it turned out to be something more closely approximating a history and theory of the academy. Chomsky delivered his remarks straight from a pre-written paper, complete with awkward gaze-shifting from paper to audience. But of course, this was Chomsky. So we made do.

While his political views and loud criticism of the American government have made Chomsky a household name, the Pennsylvania-born academic became famous for developing an entire field of linguistics called “generative grammar”, a theory that claims that language is an innate, and uniquely human, ability, as well as claiming that all the languages of the world are inherently based on the same innate syntactic structure. Read more…